


eia nobis annus est

by acrosticacrumpet



Series: The Fearsome Robber Band of Pevensie-Harker [2]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, Kay Harker Series - John Masefield, The Father Christmas Letters - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Adventure, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Christmas, Crossover, Friendship, Future Fic, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Post-Book: The Last Battle (Narnia)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-02-28 23:14:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13281933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acrosticacrumpet/pseuds/acrosticacrumpet
Summary: Amidst elves, bears and fireworks, Susan and Kay are called upon - once again - to save Christmas.





	eia nobis annus est

**Author's Note:**

> on the last day of christmas my true love gave to me  
> belated christmas fic because why not start the year as you probably will go on
> 
> on the other hand, i wrote this in 2 weeks, which by my standards is inhumanly quick
> 
> a couple of things: 1. i broke science a lot in this fic, but like, so did j. r. r. tolkien so i feel fine about that; 2. if you like boats, i apologise; 3. if you haven't read the father christmas letters, or the previous fic, then this is going to be very confusing; 4. i have a christmassy (by some definitions) [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/heirofseaandfire/playlist/1QJ7VnVWdkfgidM4GqgnQA) for this fic (i also listened to cecilia mcdowall's "christus natus est" a lot, but that sadly is not on spotify)

When Susan opened her eyes, it was cold.

 

She knew this because she could feel it in the air; she could almost taste it, in fact – it was that kind of cold. Snow-cold, that sparkled. Oddly, she could not feel it on her body: she felt as comfortable as if she had been in bed.

 

She looked down at herself and saw that she was still wearing her pyjamas, but she had on her dressing gown over them, and thick, warm boots. _Well, this is convenient_ , she thought to herself.

 

She could just about see herself, for the place she was in was dimly lit by one lantern that sat in a bracket on the stone wall. It was only now, she realised, that she had thought to notice that the wall was stone, or that there was a lantern. The lantern was odd, too: it looked like a torch that someone had put glass around.

 

"Oh," she said, out loud.

 

"Susan?"

 

She turned towards the voice. "Kay," she said, with some relief. Her mind was waking up enough to be perturbed at the idea of being alone.

 

He too was in his pyjamas and dressing gown, the only concession to the weather being his boots. Not that it was weather, down here: Susan had a sense they were underground. Here it was just cold.

 

"Where are we, do you think?" she said softly.

 

"I don't know." He was almost whispering. "Underground, I think. And in some very cold country. If we were just in some cellar or cave, it wouldn't be this cold."

 

"As if it were about to snow," Susan murmured.

 

"Yes, exactly. Or how the rock under a glacier must feel."

 

"I don't like," Susan said, "the fact that I can only see as far as the lantern reaches. Not knowing what the rest of the room looks like. I don't think I'd mind if I knew how we'd got here, but as it is..."

 

Kay strode over to it. "Then let's take a look around," he said, pulling the lantern from its bracket. He walked in a circle around Susan, lamp in hand. As he walked, she saw that they were in some kind of rocky chamber, and judging by the blackness directly ahead of her, it was a tunnel. This lamp seemed to be the only one of its kind: there was no sign of any like bracket on the walls.

 

"Underground caves," Kay murmured. "Now that brings back memories. Natural ones, that someone built over..."

 

"Natural except for _that_ ," Susan said.

 

"Except for what?"

 

"Look up." Directly above them, set into the ceiling, was a wooden trapdoor.

 

"Ah," Kay said. "Yes." He cocked his head to one side. "What's that sound...?"

 

Susan strained her ears. She could hear distant roaring. It took her a few moments to separate it into two sounds, coming from different places. From far off, in the inky blackness, she could hear something like water moving, a river or a waterfall.

 

And from nearby, she could hear shouts and a sound she recognised – anciently – as the clattering and thumping of spears against a floor.

 

For a moment they stood in silence, listening for the sounds. Then Kay turned towards Susan, face half in shadow. "Do you think," he said eventually, under his breath, "they're in the room directly above us?"

 

Susan thought for a moment. "I shouldn't think so," she replied. "It wouldn't have taken us this long to notice them, if they were. But I don't think we're safe here."

 

"No," said Kay. "I think you're right." He moved closer to her, and Susan slipped her arm into his.

 

"Should we go on down the tunnel?" she said. "Or... should we try to go up there and find out what's going on?"

 

Kay bit his lip.

 

"I don't like the idea of going up there," he said. "Only I also have a horrible feeling that we'll have to."

 

That struck a chord somewhere, a winter memory, with snow and a streetlamp. "I think I said something similar, a long time ago," Susan said quietly. "It was right, then, too."

 

Kay took a deep breath. "Well. Better to know than not to." He threw her a rueful grin, in the flickering lantern-light. "I think I'm out of practice with adventuring."

 

"That's all right," Susan murmured, smiling back at him, albeit a little grimly. "I daresay we'll get less rusty as we go."

 

The trapdoor had a catch in it, where a hook seemed meant to go, like an attic trapdoor. Kay put the lantern back into its bracket, and hoisted Susan up so that she could fumble around in the dark, feeling for the catch to pull the trapdoor open. After a few tries she got it right.

 

 _It's a good thing I don't get nervous at being lifted up_ , she thought, as it swung open. She had practice – Peter had been in the habit of lifting all of them up at any moment, including Edmund, even when he and Ed were nearly the same height.

 

Thinking of Peter was a piercing pain, still. She did not know if it would ever be anything else. But it was better now: she could let it come without stifling it, let the grief and the fond memory inhabit the same place. It meant something that she would let Kay lift her up.

 

Light came down through the trapdoor as soon as it was opened – not strong light, but light all the same. They were looking up into a dimly lit room, it seemed. It was empty.

 

Susan felt them both breathe an inaudible sigh of relief. "Well," Kay said at last. "One of us had better go up there."

 

"I think it had better be me," Susan said. "I don't have the upper body strength to lift you, at any rate."

 

"That's true." Kay's hand found hers. "Are you sure you want to go up there?"

 

"No," Susan said honestly. "But I think I'd better. I'll be very quick, and maybe there'll be something up there we can use to get you up too."

 

Kay squeezed her hand. Then he let go, and lifted her to boost her up to the trap door, where she clung onto the edges with her elbows and scraped her way in. Muscle memory, long unused, reminded her of how to pull herself up through an opening, like getting out of a swimming pool.

 

The room was very nearly empty. There were some few boxes lying open on the ground, clearly ransacked of their contents. The trapdoor, now that she looked carefully at it, was nearly indistinguishable from the floorboards. She kept it open, not sure how she would find it again if it was shut. There was one door out of the room.

 

Susan crept over to it, took it by the handle, and very carefully, unbearably slowly so that she would hear any creak before it started, she just barely opened it and peeped through.

 

She saw strange creatures dancing about, thumping spears against the floor. They were exulting over something shiny. She looked closer. It was a railway set, gleaming and new, and very detailed, with bridges and tiny stations peopled by tiny men. As she watched, one of the strange creatures – they were vaguely humanoid, but their skin looked somehow different – took one of the beautiful new trains and threw it against the tracks so hard that it smashed. The others shouted with glee.

 

 _Goblins_ , she thought, without knowing where the word had come from.

 

Quietly, she closed the door. "I'm coming down," she said to Kay. "But I want to pass some things down first." One by one, she handed him the boxes, which seemed to have survived mostly unharmed. Some of them were very large. In a corner of the room she saw a coil of rope, and passed that down too.

 

When she was done, she sat herself on the edge of the trapdoor, and Kay lifted her down again.

 

"Goblins," she said. "There are goblins in there – not in the room, I mean – in the bit just outside it. They have spears. The room I was in looks like some kind of cellar, I think they must have ransacked it and taken everything. When I saw them, they were... they were smashing up children's railway sets."

 

"Railway sets," Kay murmured. "Curiouser and curiouser."

 

"I don't think Wonderland had any goblins," Susan remarked. "Though I wouldn't put it past the world Through the Looking Glass."

 

"They had to have someone for the knights to fight, after all."

 

"The Lion and the Unicorn seem to have done enough fighting to keep people occupied..."

 

They were both trying to delay deciding what to do next, and they knew it. "I _think_ ," Kay said at last, "we shouldn't try going up that way."

 

"Yes," Susan agreed. "Which I suppose means the tunnel, next."

 

"It does." Kay looked over towards the lantern. "We can take the lamp with us down it – in fact, I've a feeling that was what it was designed to do. It came out of that bracket very easily, and the glass around it makes it like a sort of flashlight. But first do you think we ought to block that trapdoor?"

 

"That's what I was thinking when I brought those things down," Susan said.

 

They shut the trapdoor, and looped the rope through the hook and along through another where a lock probably ought to have been: it took several tries and a lot of swearing. Then they stacked up boxes in a pile that just reached the trapdoor, straining against the ceiling. It wouldn't be impossible to break through, but as Susan pointed out, the goblins would have to find the trapdoor first.

 

"Right," said Kay. He had taken the lantern from its bracket on the wall again. "Ready?"

 

Susan took his arm. "Let's do it," she said.

 

It was strange to move along a passage in which the only light was that which travelled with you. The stone floor became real as they moved along it, the walls bloomed out around them in the lantern's orbit. Their footsteps echoed. The floor, Susan realised, was beginning to glisten with damp, and the sound of water moving grew slowly louder.

 

Although the water had sounded far away, they didn’t actually have to walk for very long before they reached it. After a little time they came to a channel – wide, but not quite the size of a river – of clear, swift-flowing water. Sitting in it, tied to a post on shore, was a flat-bottomed boat. It was painted with colourful patterns, and empty of everything except one oar.

 

There was nothing but rock face on the other side of the water.

 

 "Well," Susan said, after a moment. "There would seem to be only one way onwards. Are you any good at sculling?"

 

It transpired that Kay had sculled before. It also became apparent, as they clambered into the boat, that it – like the wall in the first room – had a bracket where one could set the lantern. Susan was not surprised. Somehow, she felt certain that they were meant to travel in the boat, like the certainty that came upon her in dreams.

 

Unlike the path to the water, the river – as Susan had come to think of it – seemed endless, going on for what felt like miles. Still the light of the lantern opened the way up in front of them as Kay swept them along, his oar-strokes practised and steady. The first thing to come in sight was always the scattered light on the water, dancing ahead of them. Then would come the walls and the water around the boat.

 

Then would come the pictures on the walls.

 

They reminded her a little of the cave paintings discovered at Lascaux, in that they had a powerful simplicity to them. But the colours were by far more varied. And these were not paintings of animals, or at least not only animals: while there were bears, reindeer, stags, oxen and many others besides, there were also geometric patterns running in careful arcs up to the ceiling, like those on the boat, and pictures of sun, stars and moon, and what looked like fireworks.

 

When they had first started to appear, she had whispered, "Kay. Look," and he had looked, and they had exchanged a glance, and fallen silent. The pictures filled her with a feeling too still to be anticipation or excitement, yet something like both. The still beginnings of both. Like snow frozen in motion.

 

She felt as if she were waking up, but this adventure only grew more dreamlike.

 

As they went on, the pictures changed. "Kay," Susan murmured, staring at one which depicted a man in a bishop's mitre listening at the window of a house in which three girls stood. "Don't these look as if – there were some story behind them? Legend, or history?"

 

"Yes," Kay said. He had less freedom to look, since he had to keep an eye on his sculling. Still he turned his head towards her briefly, and flicked his gaze to a tableau depicting a man in medieval armour, and many smaller men in red, fighting off small humanoid figures. "That one must be a battle scene. And the one with the bishop – it looks like an early Church legend."

 

There were also scenes that showed a house being built, with caverns and cellars underneath, and a great tree with the northern lights around it and the stars shining through it.  And there were more battle scenes with the humanoid figures, which Susan realised, as they passed, looked like the goblins she had seen earlier.

 

One image in particular stood out to her: a great wheel, with what looked like curving rays of blue coming off it in all directions. _The wheel of the universe?_ She tried to remember what blue stood for – sadness, holiness, heaven... For a boy instead of a girl, though it hadn't always been so...

 

At length the lantern at the prow of the boat began to show a larger chamber, with paths of rock on either side, and the channel too grew wider. Susan wasn't sure if it was her imagination, but its sound seemed to grow louder, and she felt as if it might be deeper. For a while the paintings continued, huge murals filled with Arctic flora and fauna, and beautiful patterns that seemed to be composed of suns, moons and stars. Then, after a few final geometric bands across the ceiling, they tailed off, leaving only rock.

 

"What's that ahead...?" Kay breathed.

 

Susan peered out from behind him. The ceiling, she noticed, was getting lower. Now the lantern-light seemed to show two thick wooden panels at the side of the channel, pointing out towards them. The boat drifted onwards: as it passed between them, Susan saw ahead another two panels, but these two were shut, and the water was speeding up and foaming where it met them. By the side of the channel, there was a thick wooden post.

 

“A mooring place,” Kay said. “Here, you’d better tie up the boat, I need to steer.” He paddled them as close to shore as he could, and Susan took up the rope attached to the stern of the boat and fastened it firmly to the post.

 

They clambered out of the boat. As Kay tried to straighten up, his head hit the ceiling. “Ah!” He winced, rubbing at it. With such a low ceiling, this part of the tunnel was easily lit by the lantern, which remained set at the prow of the boat. Kay recovered himself quickly and hobbled away from the boat; Susan followed him, bent over to avoid a repeat incident. He seemed to be looking for something.

 

Now that they were out of the boat, Susan saw that each set of panels seemed to be attached to a long wooden lever. The first gate's lever had with it a kind of metal post, to which was attached a strip of some other, furrowed metal; that in turn was attached to a wheel, which was attached to a cog, which had a length of metal sticking out of it. There was a handle fitted onto this, but not permanently: the length of metal fitted through a neat hole at the base of the handle.

 

"A windlass," Kay murmured. He immediately turned and moved towards the closed panels, where Susan saw an identical post, except that it didn't have the handle. "We're in a lock."

 

"A lock...?"

 

"Have you ever been on a canal-boat holiday?" Susan shook her head. "A lock is something they use on a canal – or on a river, for that matter – to get the boat up or down slopes. It has two gates – you can see, we came through the first one, and there's the second."

 

"I can't see a slope." Susan peered at the second set of panels – so it was a gate, after all – but the chamber was narrowing around them: she could not see past.

 

"No, that's how a lock works. It keeps the water level constant when the second gate is closed, and then when you drain the lock, the water sinks and takes your boat downhill with it..." Kay was looking between the posts. Susan followed his eyes.

 

Set into the wall of the chamber, tarnished but seemingly not rusted, she saw a huge wheel. "The only thing I can't work out," Kay said, "is what the wheel is for."

 

"I shouldn't think," Susan whispered, "that it does anything, if you don't turn it."

 

"I'm inclined to agree with you." They were both whispering now: the low chamber seemed to demand it of them. "I only wonder if it's needed to make the lock work, somehow... but I can't see how." In the dim light she could see the set of his brow, though his features were shadowed. He was frowning. "It looks just like any other lock I've seen."

 

" _Just_ like any other lock, hmm?" Susan murmured.

 

He laughed softly. "I will grant you, not many of them looked quite like this. Though I was once in a boat, in a tunnel underground, such as this one..." His voice had taken on that hollow dreaming quality it did, when he was trying to remember something from that fateful winter of his childhood.

 

"Is that what taught you about locks?"

 

For a moment, he didn't answer. Then: "Do you know," he said, slowly, "I think it might have. I had an interest in boats after that, for a while, not sea ships but boats, and the sluice gates that ran the locks... I never thought to ask, later, where that interest had come from."

 

"It's lucky you had it, anyway," Susan said. "Had we better get back to the boat, do you think, and try to carry on?"

 

Kay shook himself as if to shake off some dark thought, and hit his head on the ceiling again. His _Ow!_ echoed off the tunnel walls. "Yes, I suppose we ought to. Though I do wonder about that wheel." He smiled ruefully. "Well, faint heart never won fair lady."

 

"I don't know who it is you're expecting to win," Susan said pointedly, "but there's only one lady here."

 

"Oh, are you a lady? I hadn't guessed."

 

Susan shook out the folds of her dressing gown and made him a deep, formal curtsy.

 

They went back towards the boat, and Kay climbed in again. "You'd better stay on shore," he said. "It'll be better if I'm in the boat, I've done this sort of thing before. But it means you'll have to do all the work, I'm afraid."

 

"That's all right," Susan said, "you've been sculling the whole way here."

 

Under Kay's instruction, she pushed the lever to shut the first gate, and turned the windlass to drain the lock. The water grew lower and lower, and the boat sank with it, with Kay sitting cheerfully in its centre, holding his oar. When she could drain the lock no lower, Susan went over to the second gate. She was relieved to find a set of stairs in the rock, leading down to the lower channel on the other side – of course, the water in the lock was at that same level, now – and a mooring post not far after the gate. With Kay's signal, she opened the second gate.

 

There was something wonderful in being able to make the gates open and close at will, something that made her feel almost like a child. But then she had been feeling like a child this whole night, in a way, quietly excited not to know what was happening. She felt calm and very alive.

 

Kay sculled out of the lock steadily, and moored the boat. She closed the gate as he came over to the foot of the stairs, bearing the lantern to light her path. The staircase steps were slippery, steep and irregular: Susan went down them sitting down, one foot at a time, hands gripping the steps as she let herself down.

 

"Where _are_ we?" she whispered. The ceiling was at a reasonable height now (she'd had to sit down just to get down the first few steps, it had been so low at the top), but by the lantern light she could see that there were no more paintings on it or the walls. It looked as if they had come into quite a different part of the tunnel: the rocky shore on either side of the channel seemed, to her, much wider than before.

 

"I don't know," Kay said, nonsensically. Of course neither of them knew. Carrying the lantern, they followed its light further until at last they reached a wall. It told them nothing, since it was almost entirely blank but for a bracket where a lantern might go.

 

"Back to the boat?" Kay said softly, switching arms and lifting the lantern higher.

 

"Kay!"

 

"What is it?"

 

"Look _up_!"

 

It was another trapdoor. And Susan could hear shouting coming from it – this time from close to.

 

She looked to Kay, whose face, even in the flickering lamplight, had paled. "Should we go up?" he said. This time his voice was very soft indeed. "It sounds as if they're in the room right above."

 

Susan strained her ears. She could hear the same roar of shouting as before, but – she realised suddenly – it was the same distance away as it had been the first time. The goblins weren't in the room above them. It was just that there _was_ shouting directly above them: deep rumbling voices and high pure ones, neither kind anything like the voices of the goblins.

 

She heard a loud bang, and then another and another, and then what sounded like a volley of shots.

 

"I don't _think_ ," she whispered, "it's goblins up there this time. I think whoever's up there might be fighting them. But it sounds... dangerous."

 

"Go on?" Kay didn't sound convinced by his own words. Neither was Susan. Somehow she felt in her bones that this was where the boat had been meant to take them. It was a dreamlike kind of certainty, and realising that, she realised that under the sharp pricks of fear, she felt deeply, serenely still.

 

She shook her head. "Go up."

 

"All right, but you went up first last time. Let me risk it this time." He set the lantern in its bracket on the wall.

 

"You can't," Susan pointed out, though she didn't like the fact and knew she sounded afraid: "you're the taller. I couldn't lift you on my shoulders at all."

 

Kay swore.

 

"It's not that I doubt your courage," he said.

 

" _I_ do," Susan said. Even with that deep stillness in her, she felt miserably nervous. "But it has to be done. But – if I even squeak, even one little noise of fright, and you lift me down again, all right?"

 

"All right." Kay bent over so she could climb onto his shoulders – “Oof, watch the back, I'm not as young as I once was" – and lifted her up so she could open the trapdoor. This one was bolted shut. It took her fingers several tries to get it open.

 

As it swung open, she heard several things. There were a good many high-pitched cries of something in another language; then there was a deep male voice, gasping in shock and saying commandingly, "Keep back, all of you!"; then there was a very deep rumble that might have been a curse in yet another language, and more cries and gasps in the higher voices.

 

Kay set her down straight away, and they moved round to look through the trapdoor, Susan staying close by him. He took her hand and squeezed it tight: Susan felt that he was scared, though he stood straight and bold.

 

Looking down through the trapdoor were several faces. One was that of an enormous polar bear, much taller than a man, and standing on two legs. Then there were a lot of quite small people, as alien as the goblins had been, but somehow more graceful and much less disturbing. All were gazing down grimly, and some of the smaller people had bows trained on them. And finally –

 

"You!" The word was nearly punched out of Susan, breathy, low and urgent.

 

She hardly knew how to understand what she was seeing. The last was a tall, stout man dressed all in red, with a flowing white beard that nearly covered his chest. Susan's mind was almost blank with – shock – wonder – complete incomprehension –   

 

That quiet, excited feeling now rose, like foam, bubbles, sparks of a fire, until it was boiling restlessly under her skin like an itch. She was full of fear and wonder. She could not speak.

 

He looked exactly as she remembered him, and yet until a moment ago she couldn't have said that she remembered how he looked at all. His presence seemed too big for her mind, she could not make space for it. It was impossible, all of this. It was exactly what that dreamlike stillness had expected.

 

Kay gripped her hand tight, but Susan knew, somehow, that he was no longer truly afraid.

 

"Susan Pevensie," said Father Christmas, in a voice of such wonder and joy that it could have made her weep.

 

*

 

They were both helped up into the room by the polar bear. "North Polar Bear, at your service," he said in that deep rumbly voice, and Susan felt a little thrill of delight to hear it – how had she forgotten what it sounded like, when Bears spoke?

 

"How did we come here?" she said. Outside, she heard more shouting. Some of the smaller figures ran off towards the door, taking with them what looked like some sort of rockets. She noticed now that they too wore red, bright as a holly berry, and hand-embroidered with patterns around the hems.

 

There was a series of loud bangs, and the shouting receded a little.

 

"Perhaps this will explain, better than I can," Father Christmas said, and reaching into a decorated bag that lay on one of the room's many wooden boxes, he brought out a horn ending in a lion's mouth.

 

Susan's breath caught very sharply. Kay squeezed her hand. Her eyes flickered for a moment to his face; he did not look as if he quite understood what was happening yet, but his eyes were bright and sparkling, such as she had rarely ever seen them.

 

Her heart was full of something she could not name. To see this thing, as to see and hear Father Christmas, was somehow too big: it was _too_ bright, _too_ real. She reached out one hand, very slowly, and ran her fingers lightly over the arch and curve of it.

 

It was like a name she could not speak. _I_ _heard a story about a Word like that once_ , she thought, fingers singing with the shining smoothness of it.

 

"I had thought it failed," Father Christmas said, in a voice so soft that Susan felt he must sense what she was feeling. "I thought it might no longer be able to summon help, since the land for which it was made is long gone, now. But you still remain, the last of them all" – Susan's throat caught on a silent sob – “and the first to hold it, the one for whom it was made."

 

Wordlessly, Susan held out both her hands, and he placed it in them for a moment. For just a second she was still, then at once her hands were at work, feeling and remembering, turning it over and tracing its lines. But she found she couldn't bear to hold it long, and handed it back.

 

"And you, Kay Harker," he went on. Kay startled, and straightened. "You also I remember. I believe one year I gave you a boat, by way of the Bishop. I hope you had good use of it?"

 

"I did," Kay said, in a low quiet tone Susan had never heard him use. "I did indeed: it saved my life and my friends' lives, by letting us escape from a gang of villains, on flood-water."

 

"I am very glad of it," Father Christmas said. His voice was not as deep as some, and yet it seemed to go right through you, Susan thought, filling you with warmth. "I am glad to see both of you."

 

There was a great renewed shouting, and the door of the room began to tremble. Susan and Kay tensed. "Take cover!" Father Christmas commanded, and they followed him and the elves to the other end of the room. Not that there was much space: it was filled with wooden boxes, stacked high to the ceiling.

 

Then they heard an incredibly loud bang and a volley of sharp, spark-like bangs after it. The North Polar Bear ambled back into view. "That'll settle them for a while, I should think," he boomed, in a satisfied tone. "A big rocket, and one of your best fountains."

 

"Are you – throwing fireworks at them?" Susan asked, after the moment it took her to parse this.

 

"Aye, lady," said one of the elves. "The goblins can't abide fire and light – not _our_ kind, the kind Father Christmas makes. Though I should think they'd like the bangs and smoke if they had the fireworks for themselves! Lucky that this was the cellar we shut ourselves in."

 

"Luck had nothing to do with it," the North Polar Bear interrupted. "It was my idea."

 

"Only because you were following your nose," the elf countered. He turned back to Susan. "To be quite fair, he _did_ bring us here: he said it was the only place that didn't stink of goblin."

 

"We have much to thank him for," Father Christmas said. He had cracked open another box, which, Susan saw, was full of fireworks. "He was the one who sounded the alarm and woke me. Susan, Kay, this is Ilbereth, my secretary." Susan saw that there was a small silver pen clipped to the elf's pocket. "And the North Polar Bear you have met."

 

"And a pleasure it was," Kay said politely. "We are glad to meet you both."

 

Ilbereth swept them a neat bow; the Polar Bear grunted in a pleased fashion, and went further down the stacks, presumably to find more fireworks.

 

"Old man," came his growling voice, "where are you keeping your Roman candles these days?"

 

"Try the next stack down!" Father Christmas called back.

 

Though each voice was cheerful enough, Susan thought, all those in the room seemed grim underneath. They might be old friends, and well armed with fireworks, but they were still besieged in a cellar.

 

"Kay," she said softly, "that horn was my horn, from – from when I was a Queen. It was sworn to summon help in times of dire need, to summon whoever was needed. If that's what summoned us –”

 

"I see," Kay said. Susan knew she did not need to say any more.

 

"Indeed," said Father Christmas, turning back to them. Now his gaze was serious, though his eyes were still bright. "And we do need help. This is the first time the goblins have gone so far; they have entered my house before, but never besieged me in it. I fear for those of my elves not in this cellar. The goblins _must_ be driven out – and quickly, or I will not be able to bring anything for Christmas, this year. Perhaps not for a long time. There is no knowing how much they have already destroyed.

 

"So I must ask you – what help can you bring us?"

 

Kay's back straightened still further so that he was standing tall. Susan wondered if her face looked like his, suddenly stern and focused. She felt it – a change that had once been familiar, the Susan of peace giving way to the Susan of action.

 

"I can shoot a bow," she said. "Though I did not often ride to battle, back Then."

 

"I was a good hand with a sword once," Kay added. "I don't know that I would still be."

 

Father Christmas looked at them thoughtfully, his brow furrowed. "Another hand at the sword – or bow – would not go amiss. But I misdoubt me that the horn brought you here for that. I have elves who can use the bow and the sword both."

 

"And there's more goblins out there, by the sound of it, than either of us could pick off," Kay said, giving voice to what they were all thinking. A renewed roar came from the other side of the door, and Ilbereth and a few other elves went running past, Roman candles and other such weapons in their arms for throwing.

 

"I think so too," Susan said. On impulse, she moved to sit on one of the larger empty boxes. "I could only wish the horn sent instructions as well as helpers. But why should it? It never did before."

 

Kay settled on the floor in front of her. "What _did_ it do before?"

 

Susan cast her mind back. Though she could remember, now, that there had _been_ a horn and it had summoned her, the memories were hazy, like trying to remember a game or a belief from childhood. "It called my brother, when I was threatened by a wolf..." Kay drew in his breath through his teeth. Of course, he had fought Wolves too, of another kind. "It brought us back, a thousand years later, to the ruins of the castle – the castle by the sea..."

 

"Cair Paravel," Father Christmas said gently.

 

"We were sent to help the young prince to take back his throne. Though we picked over the ruins, first," Susan said, the images coming to her in flashes, like a sudden rent in a veil. Flashes that hurt and healed at once, that filled her with piercing longing. "I found a golden chessman..."

 

 _Etlit a gereis, neut mwy_ , ran the _englyn_ she had read once: _Sorrow for what I loved, it is greater._ Though it hurt less now than it had. It was becoming part of her again, a wider world, and on this night of all nights, when she felt still and alive, it came easier.

 

"Did you meet the prince there?" Kay said, gazing up at her from the floor and breaking her brief reverie.

 

"No," Susan said slowly, her mind travelling slowly back over the journey they had made so long ago, like climbing uphill. "No, we didn't. We had to go and find him."

 

"As we had to come here," Kay murmured.

 

“Yes. As we had to come here.”

 

“But you did find him, and help him?”

 

“We did,” Susan said. For a moment her mind was full of the sound of wind in the trees, like the sighing of the sea. She remembered the trees moving, walking. “To my knowledge, no-one ever summoned help with that horn who didn’t then get what they needed. Though it might not come where, or when, it was expected.”

 

“I should think so,” said Father Christmas, who had turned away for a moment to instruct the elves and the North Polar Bear which fireworks to throw next. “I made it that way.”

 

“You made it,” Susan echoed – “then is there something in how it was made, to explain why it brought us, of all people? You surely understand its magic better than anyone.”

 

“It responds to need,” Father Christmas replied. “That is its keystone, as it were, the central thing that determines how it does its work. But how that need is reflected in its answer – that, the horn itself determines. That would be a deeper magic than mine.”

 

“Need...” Kay repeated. “Susan, there wasn’t – something in the journey you had to make, to find the prince, that you would have needed to save him?”

 

Susan traced over the memory, finding more flashes, of the sea, a gorge, the woods. They were clearer than any of her memories of that time had been, before this night. She wondered if it was something to do with Father Christmas. “Caspian, Prince Caspian, that was his name. We started out at Cair Paravel... It was a dwarf who brought us to him in the end, but we’d already worked out, by the time we met him, that we must be at least a thousand years later than the time of our rule. The dwarf – I _wish_ I could remember his name! – he filled us in on the rest as we went.” As a matter of fact all she could recall of the dwarf was the appellation _DLF_ , but she didn’t really think she could give that as a name. “I remember... a gorge, and looking for lions... Oh, damn, I wish I could _remember_...”

 

“But nothing in particular that you needed to save Caspian?”

 

Susan put her head in her hands. More bangs sounded from behind the door. “Nothing but time. I think by the time we got there, Peter and Ed already had an idea of how they wanted to solve the problem of the usurper. And Lucy and I went to wake the woods” – she remembered joyful shouting, as unlike the sounds coming from behind the door as possible – “I suppose we must have already worked out that the Trees were asleep, we’d been travelling through them for the last day at least. Lucy always had a sense for that kind of thing.”

 

She was sure there’d been no shake or sob in her voice, but nonetheless, Father Christmas laid a warm hand on her shoulder. She covered it with her own, holding onto it.

 

 _And we saw Aslan_ , she thought, but did not say. “What are you thinking?” she said, instead.

 

“That _where_ the horn brings people,” Kay said slowly, “and _when_ , is determined by need as much as the rest of its power. There is – I can’t think of anything in particular to suggest it, but I can’t help feeling that it must have given you that time, and that journey, because it was needed.”

 

“No,” Susan said. “No, you’re right. It did. By the time we found Caspian, we were – we were ready.” Lions in gorges, and the sound the wind made in the trees...

 

“That accords with everything I know of the horn’s power,” Father Christmas said. “But then what did you see, on your journey?”

 

“The river,” Susan said, at the same time that Kay said, “Paintings on the walls.”

 

“The river!” Father Christmas' voice was low and urgent: it seemed as if he had not noticed it when he was looking down through the trapdoor. "I had forgotten the river."

 

"River?" said Ilbereth, coming back again from the defence at the door. "I did not know there was one."

 

"It has not been used for a long time," Father Christmas said. "It was my Grandfather Yule who set up the locks on it, and built the boat; it leads out to where my old house was. And the paintings on the walls that you mention – those were his. At least to begin with: I added a few, but I have hardly been down there since the fifteenth century."

 

"So he painted the walls and the boat," Susan murmured. "With the same patterns on both. But why use the river?"

 

"To transport goods?" Kay looked to Father Christmas.

 

"Transport..." Susan felt something in her mind burst like a bubble.  She stood up. "Kay! The river – they're under siege here. What _makes_ it a siege?"

 

"Well, that there's no way out except through the goblins – ” Kay stopped. Swore, loudly.

 

"You see?"

 

"Yes. Sir" – he turned to Father Christmas – “what you said about the river leading out to your old house – you can escape, if you use the boat. You can break the trap."

 

Father Christmas shook his head slowly. "I could," he said gently, "but I am afraid that would not remove the goblins from my house, and that I must do."

 

Susan sat heavily back down again.

 

"Oh, hell," she said. There was yet another roar of the goblins at the door. "I suppose it's back to sword and bow again."

 

"There must be some way," Kay said, though he did not sound sure.

 

They heard a renewed press of goblins at the door, and rushed forward, though they could do nothing to help: Ilbereth, the North Polar Bear and the elves were perfectly competent with the fireworks. "Does it sound to you," Susan murmured unhappily to Kay, "as if there were more of them?"

 

Kay nodded minutely.

 

For a while they watched as sparklers, Catherine wheels and rockets drove the goblins back from the door. There were still plenty of fireworks left – boxes upon boxes filled the cellar – but Susan couldn't help a rising sense of anxiety. She was painfully aware of how close the boat was, and how useless.

 

"You aren't worried about what the fireworks might do to your house?" she said to Father Christmas, after a while, as a way to distract herself. "I mean, this seems like a rather small and flammable space to be setting them off in."

 

Father Christmas laughed, not unkindly. "I might, if this weren't my fireworks cellar – and if _someone_ hadn't inspired me to use stronger magic to protect my house from that kind of damage," he said, casting a look at the North Polar Bear.

 

"It wasn't the Rory Bory Aylis fireworks that broke your old house," the North Polar Bear retorted, in a voice of deep indignation, "it was the time the North Pole broke."

 

"Yes, and who broke it?"

 

The North Polar Bear muttered something about ungrateful people who never appreciated the efforts of others to help.

 

Kay had been talking to the elves; now he wandered back over to Susan. "Ilbereth says," he reported, "he thinks most of the goblins must be at the door now, even the ones who were scattered across the house. They're certainly making enough noise for it." It was true: the din had been growing steadily louder for some time.

 

"Damn, damn, damn," said Susan, for want of a better response.

 

"I know," Kay said. He sounded tired, though the strange energy that had possessed them all the night so far had not yet left him. "It's driving me mad, thinking of all the goblins _there_ , and the boat _here_ , and – all the makings of a solution, and not a solution in sight."

 

" _Nor any drop to drink_ ," Susan quoted unhappily. "Yes. Two sets of people to get out of the house. One way out of the house. If we could only stand aside and _push_ the goblins out through the trapdoor –”

 

"Susan!"

 

"Are you going to tell me we can? Because that's the best news I've heard this night –”

 

"No." Kay sat down on one of the boxes. "No, I was only thinking – it's risky, but if there were just some way of _leading_ them out, making them follow the course of the river – but how you'd get all of them out, or make sure they all followed, I can't imagine."

 

"Well, most of them are behind that door," Susan pointed out. "It's not as if we had to draw them from all over the house."

 

"True enough... I wonder how well they do with water? Assuming we _could_ somehow get them all down there..." His tone was the same he used when solving a crossword, almost, the puzzle-solving mode. "If they're strong swimmers it might well be useless, but if they don't like water..."

 

"Let's check." Susan turned to Father Christmas, who was overseeing the unpacking of a box of Roman candles. "Sir, a question – how do goblins like water? To swim in, I mean?"

 

"Swimming?" He frowned, and stroked his beard absently. "They can, but they don't much like it. They prefer to come over the tundra when they can; they eat the sea-birds' eggs, and so on. Water won't kill them, but they wouldn't enjoy it."

 

Not as promising as Susan had hoped, but – “Then if we could get them all down _there_ , into the water? And get it flowing, fast enough to drive them away?"

 

"That's no use," Kay said mournfully. "There's not enough water, and it's not fast enough. Not for so many. And that's leaving aside how to get them down there in the first place."

 

Susan twisted to face him fully. "Couldn't we do something with the lock? That controls the flow of water where it is – surely we could use it?"

 

That surprised him: he hummed with genuine interest. "Maybe... You noticed how the ceiling got lower where the lock was? That means there must be a sharp downward slope in the path of the water, for some reason. If it weren't for the lock, there'd be a waterfall there."

 

"So if you opened both of the lock gates at once, and suddenly..."

 

"It would help, that's for sure. But..." Kay frowned, sounding disappointed. "I think you would need more locks than that to get the real force you'd need, and all of them opened at once."

 

"There are more locks," Father Christmas said, so quietly it took Susan a moment to realise he'd spoken at all. "This underground river has many ups and downs, created over long years. My grandfather had to put in plenty of sluice gates: the ones you came through were the last."

 

"To open them all at once..." Kay rubbed at his temples. "You'd need a lot of people, and surely some of the elves at least would have to stay here, to take care of any stray goblins."

 

Susan traced the river back to the lock in her mind, trying to imagine how it could be opened suddenly. There were the levers of the gates, there were the posts, there was the windlass... There was the little staircase, right under the low ceiling...

 

There was the wheel.

 

Her mind seemed to burst open like a cracked nut. The wheel. The wheel that Kay couldn't work out the use of. The wheel painted on the wall, huge and central, with rays of blue thrown off in all directions. Only they weren't rays. They were water.

 

It took her a minute to get the words out: the concept seemed too big and simple to say out loud. "What about the wheel?" She managed it, all in a rush.

 

"The wheel?" Kay stared at her, then looked as if someone had hit him with a brick. "The wheel!"

 

When she looked at Father Christmas, his eyes were blazing, but his expression was soft with wondering hope. "A wheel?"

 

"There was –” Susan's tongue felt suddenly tied. "At the lock, there was a wheel, between the gates, in the wall. Kay said he didn't know what it was for – and there was, earlier, in the paintings on the walls there was a painting of a great wheel, with water coming off it in all directions."

 

"A wheel to control all the gates..." Father Christmas' eyes flickered slightly upwards, as if he were trying to remember something. "It _is_ the sort of thing my Grandfather Yule would have built. Not a man to leave things to chance, my grandfather."

 

"Then you don't know for sure what it does?"

 

He shook his head. "No. But it's easily tested – Ilbereth –” Ilbereth came running over. "Ilbereth, will you go with Kay to the lock, and test the wheel for me? Turn it just a little way, then stop, and see what happens."

 

Ilbereth bowed, and he and Kay went to the trapdoor and jumped lightly down, Kay with a look back at Susan that showed the restless excitement in his eyes.

 

"I thought it had better be them," Father Christmas explained, somewhat apologetically, "because your friend Kay knows locks, and Ilbereth is faster and stronger than you both, and has his own magic besides. It will be easier for him to stop the wheel, if it wants to keep turning."

 

Susan shook her head, smiling helplessly, not so much in joy as in helpless anticipation. She sat down on the box where Kay had been sitting, mind blank with the huge stillness of waiting for something so important.

 

Some very few minutes later, the North Polar Bear was lifting them both back into the room. Kay was grinning like a boy, and Ilbereth looked at once breathless and as if he could have run five miles in one lightning stretch.

 

"It works," Kay said, voice breathy with exhilaration. "And it works fast – Ilbereth had to fairly slam it back to where it had been."

 

Susan leapt to her feet. "Then all we have to do is figure out a way to get them down there at the right time –”

 

"Leave that to me," Father Christmas interrupted. "I know what'll get them down there. If I go down in the boat, and take some boxes with me, as if I intended to escape with some toys, it won't take much to provoke them all to follow me. And the floodwater will carry me out safe enough."

 

"Sir, it really won't be safe –” Ilbereth protested.

 

"Some half-drowned goblins," Father Christmas said firmly, "can't hurt me very badly. Or have you forgotten that in a real fight they hardly dare come near me?"

 

"Even so," Ilbereth said, bravely pushing on, "I must insist _someone_ goes with you, sir."

 

"Here, what's all this?" The North Polar Bear came lumbering over from where he had been co-ordinating the defence. "I'll go. Goblins can't hurt me."

 

Father Christmas shook his head. "No, you must stay here and keep my house and cellars safe from them. There isn't much room in that boat" – he held up a hand to forestall the North Polar Bear's cry of indignation – “so my elves must stay here from the most part, and goblins _can_ hurt them. I will be depending on you to keep them safe, old friend."

 

The North Polar Bear nodded, with a little growl that said how much he relished the task.

 

"Then let us go with you," Susan and Kay said, at the same time, and jumped when they realised it.

 

Susan fully expected to be refused, but to her surprise Father Christmas looked positive about the idea. "That's not a bad plan," he said, pensively. "But someone must go to the wheel, too. Kay, you and Ilbereth have been already: you will know what to do. If I give you a sword and some mail, will you be able to protect Ilbereth, while he is at work with the wheel?"

 

"Gladly, sir," Kay replied, sounding ready to set off that moment. "Only it's a very enclosed space; it might be better if I turned the wheel, and Ilbereth guarded me. Under that ceiling I could hardly move."

 

"You can settle it between yourselves." Father Christmas looked seriously at him. "I am very glad I gave you that boat, Kay Harker."

 

Susan thought she saw Kay blush.

 

Father Christmas turned to her next. "You excelled with the bow I gave you, when you were a child: do you think you could keep the boat safe from pursuers, until the flood came, and those who might manage to swim after us?"

 

Susan flushed with pleasure at the praise. "I think so, sir," she said. "I'll do my best, and that’s not half bad."

 

"If you _will_ insist on being modest," Kay muttered, grinning at her.

 

Susan shot him a friendly scowl.

 

It appeared that the some of the elves, upon the alarm being raised, had risked running to the armoury first before heading for safety, and had brought a cache of weapons and mail with them. Most of this was elf-sized, but some looked as though it might fit humans, oddly enough. "I have different tasks in different realms," was all Father Christmas would say on the matter.

 

Kay and Susan were helped into mail, and Kay was handed a sword; Susan was given a bow and a quiver full of arrows, both very beautifully and delicately made. "Elf-work," Father Christmas explained. "Their own bows look very like this."

 

"It's splendid," Susan murmured, hands getting to know the bow. She felt a kind of electric energy beginning to rise in her, preparing her for the perfect clarity of mind that accompanied the perfect shot. When the time came, she would not miss. "Though it's very different from my last one."

 

"Your last one was my own work," Father Christmas said quietly. Susan looked up at him wordlessly: he smiled at her.

 

Now was the moment. A few elves remained at the door, beating back the goblins with nothing but sparklers – they must not get through too early, but they must not disperse for fear of the fireworks. As quietly as it could be done, Susan, Kay, Ilbereth and Father Christmas were lifted down through the trapdoor. Father Christmas and Susan climbed into the boat. Another elf came down, ready to untie the boat from its post and leap into it. Empty boxes were passed down with a speed and efficiency that amazed Susan, and were loaded into the boat as tightly as possible.

 

They had agreed on a hand signal for the moment when the wheel was to be turned. Ilbereth and Kay climbed back up the staircase, and Ilbereth took a place at the head of the stairs, just a little out of sight because of the way the ceiling hung over him. He would watch for the signal and give Kay the word.

 

At last there was nothing more to be done. "Now," Father Christmas said, in a voice that carried despite its low volume.

 

Susan could not quite see, from where she was, what was happening through the trapdoor. But she could hear the yelling of the goblins, their cries of triumph and then of confusion. Nerves flickered and crawled in her skin. Her grip on her bow tensed and relaxed.

 

 _Perfect calm_ , she thought. _Perfect calm for a perfect shot._

 

The goblins had spotted the trapdoor. Now Susan could just about see some peering faces, more and more by the moment, and hear fresh cries of glee. "Brace yourself," Father Christmas said out of the corner of his mouth, almost inaudibly; then he barked out something incomprehensible, with a deep, defiant laugh in it.

 

"What was that?" Susan muttered to the elf on shore, who muttered back between gritted teeth, "A deadly insult in Arctic."

 

There was a moment of complete silence, and then goblins began to swarm down from the trapdoor. A good few fell and hit their heads, and others were trampled, so their progress was not so very quick, but even so there were more than made Susan comfortable. She drew – released – shot. Posture – aim – draw – release. Posture – aim – draw – release. "Now?" she gritted out to Father Christmas.

 

He shook his head. _Not yet_. He was waiting for more goblins.

 

Then there came a great roar from above, and about twenty goblins fell down at once, seemingly kicked down by the Polar Bear – who slammed the trapdoor shut.

 

Father Christmas gave the signal so fast, Susan almost missed it. But she did not miss the boat being untied, and the elf on the shore leaping in next to her. The boat began to move – to speed up – the goblins were climbing into the water, paddling and then swimming, trying to catch up –

 

The sound that came next was like nothing Susan had ever heard.

 

It seemed to boom through her whole body. It was too big to comprehend, and it was not piercing or shrieking. It was a roar. Then, suddenly, as she mechanically took aim at another goblin, she saw a wall of white foam envelop the lock, the staircase, and every single goblin there, even the ones on shore. It was coming – it would eat her – her face was strewn with spray –

 

The boat rose sharply – it seemed to leap forward – she let out a gasp of exhilaration, in the pure halfway point between excitement and fear. They shot down the tunnel in leaps and bounds – Susan and the elf both fell on each other, and struggled to regain their balance –

 

At last Susan managed to wedge her legs such that she was firmly stuck where she was and couldn't fall. It was only through the mercy of being so tightly packed in with boxes that none of them had a bad fall. When she risked twisting around to look at Father Christmas, she saw his eyes were the brightest she had ever seen them, and he let out a deep belly-laugh.

 

Susan found herself laughing wildly in response. With her balance found, she took aim once more, for even now some very few goblins were splashing over each other to get to the boat, gasping as they went under – now back up – now under again. She laughed everything out of her mind but the perfect shot.

 

Behind them, the tunnel walls were shining, wet.

 

It was the dead of night when the end of the tunnel approached, a high doorway that must once have had great arched doors to it. The boat shot towards it and Susan squeezed her eyes shut against the brightness – even though it was only starlight.

 

The boat slid free of the water and skidded wildly across the ice. Susan clung to the side of the boat, willing her scream down into her fingers to give them more strength. At last it came to a stop.

 

They were beneath thousands of stars, more than Susan had ever seen at home, and around them the ice glistened; above, the northern lights shot sea-colours across the sky, rippling like the sound of song.

 

Father Christmas sat up, a little breathlessly. He climbed out of the boat, turned to the doorway and barked a single word: a portcullis fell across it.

 

"How funny," Susan wheezed after a minute, suddenly winded as if the boat's rapid journey had caught up with her, "it doesn't look like the sort of thing that doorway was built for."

 

"It isn't," Father Christmas assured her. "It used to have some very nice patterned doors, which I painted, but they were lost long ago – I forget why... But I knew Grandfather would have put in a portcullis. Didn't I say he was not the man to leave things to chance?"

 

Susan began to laugh, almost hysterically.

 

"I suppose we'll be clearing half-drowned goblin out of those tunnels for weeks," the elf said, from next to her.

 

"You shall have the Red Gnomes to help you," Father Christmas promised.

 

Susan clambered out of the boat and stood up, shakily. Her bow, she noticed, was intact: in fact, the bowstring wasn't even wet. She suspected the elves of magicking it somehow.

 

" _I_ suppose we're going to have to walk back to the house now," she said.

 

"I'm afraid so," Father Christmas agreed. "Leave the boat here: it's served its purpose, and I can send someone back for it, when my house is in less disarray."

 

But they had hardly set out when they saw, coming across the ice, a sleigh drawn by – were those _reindeer_? – and driven by a human-sized figure who turned out, when it got closer, to be Kay.

 

"All aboard," he said cheerfully. Susan saw that he was bundled in a thick fur blanket, and that his hair was wet and plastered to his forehead. "The North Polar Bear sent me: he said he thought I'd be more useful collecting you than anywhere else."

 

They climbed in behind him gladly. "And how do you find my reindeer?" Father Christmas asked, a note of disapproval in his voice, his eyes twinkling.

 

"Sublime," Kay replied simply. "A bit longer, and I might come to like them better than horses."

 

"That won't do," Susan said. "Then you'll have to learn how to draw reindeer as well as horses, and you know you'll never get the antlers right." Horses were the only thing Kay could draw, a remainder of being horse-mad as a boy.

 

They all burst into laughter. It was very easy to laugh in this state, Susan was finding: when the danger was suddenly over and you didn't know what to with yourself, and you were still filled with the sparkling energy of the chase, which now had turned all its fear to buoyant  relief. 

 

"You and Ilbereth were all right? You weren't hurt?" she asked Kay, thinking of the white wave which had swallowed the lock and the staircase.

 

"Yes – though I'm soaked to the skin." He gestured to his sodden hair. "The wave nearly knocked me off my feet, but I held fast to the wheel, and Ilbereth shouted something that I think must have been a spell. After that it wasn't nearly so hard to keep my balance, and I wasn't so cold."

 

"Brave lad," Father Christmas said warmly.

 

"Oh, well, it was you lot who had the hard part," Kay demurred. "To tell the truth, when that wave came through, there was little risk to either of us from goblins. But I was very glad to have Ilbereth with me."

 

"A hot drink," Susan said firmly, "and more blankets, for you, when we get in. Right?" She looked sharply at Father Christmas.

 

"By all means," he said. "I think you may find, in fact, that by the time we get back my elves will have restored much of the house to its former state, and that celebrations will have begun in earnest. There will be more mulled wine than you or I know what to do with."

 

Then the sleigh was pulling up to the great house, with its beautiful slender turrets and arched windows, so icy-white it seemed to have grown from the cliff itself, but with a golden glow of warmth within. They were ushered into a hall whose walls were entirely covered in paintings of suns, moons, stars, pine trees, birds and various other Arctic fauna: it felt, as Kay said, like walking into a picture called something like _The Far North_. A thousand lamps dangled from chains on walls and ceiling. There was a great roar of delight from the elves as they walked in.

 

For the life of her, Susan never could remember, afterwards, exactly what the party was like: what she had had to drink, or what she had said or sung, and even the details of the hall began to blur. Instead, she found herself with a great impression of light against the dotted windows of night, and a warmth so deep it seemed to go right through her – like mulled wine in the belly – and stay there, warming her bones and heart.

 

*

 

It was very warm under the blankets in Susan's bed. Or rather the bed in one of the guest rooms at Seekings, which Kay had summoned up an extra quilt for: Seekings was well-heated, but this was a very cold winter, and Susan and Catherine were his guests. Susan burrowed down into the warm clean sheets and pillows, trying to find her warm place under the blanket of Sleep. Warm, dark Sleep...

 

There was light coming in through the curtains. Green curtains, with paler green leaves and white flowers twining all over them, a William Morris-style pattern. Wait.

 

She was at Seekings, she and Catherine, to keep Kay company over Christmas, and this day was Christmas Eve. She was at Seekings in her warm bed. She was at Seekings and it was morning.

 

"But I was..." she whispered, voice sleep-hoarse, hardly daring to voice the next few words. "But I was at the North Pole."

 

But she was awake now, and becoming aware of how long her body had lain in one position. She hummed and stretched under the bedclothes, her hand slipping under her pillow to remove the uncomfortable thing under her head.

 

The thing under her head?

 

Her hand traced a smooth curve. She felt something like ivory, then metal. Susan sat bolt upright, and pulled the thing out from under her pillow, eyes squeezed shut.

 

When she opened them, she almost dropped it.

 

It was a horn. Child-sized, not meant for an adult to use, but a functional horn all the same, a marvel of its craft and beautifully carved with decorations. This time – she blinked hard to ward off tears – this time there was no lion's mouth, but upon the metal mouth of it, it was carved all round with stars.

 

She climbed out of bed, sliding into her slippers and pulling on her dressing gown. Almost before she knew where she was she was walking, horn gripped tight in one hand, heading for Kay's room – but there was Kay in the corridor, coming towards her. He looked, for want of a better word, poleaxed, and Susan realised she must look the same.

 

In his hands – minutely detailed, perfect in every way – was a child's wooden boat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> you read the whole thing! thank you for giving it a chance
> 
> i would very much recommend looking up the illustrations to the father christmas letters if you're not familiar with them: here for instance are  
> \- [father christmas and his house](http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2017/12/20/10/4779183E00000578-5197649-image-m-32_1513764278998.jpg)  
> \- [his old house and his new house](http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5113/5855764093_b3ed4538f7_o.jpg)  
> \- [the inside of his new house](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/30/22/8f/30228f7cf8e38ef5b484acd0fb498a95.jpg), and  
> \- [that time the north polar bear switched on all the rory bory aylis fireworks at once](https://tygertale.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/wpid-photo-25-nov-2012-2130.jpg?w=610&h=498)


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